Performers, Cast and Crew:

Description by OLDIES.com:

The Devil's Daughter (1939; 59 minutes): The blood-curdling sound of menacing voodoo drums haunts Sylvia Walton when she arrives from Harlem to take control of the Jamaica plantation she has inherited. There's also no sign of her half-sister, Isabelle, who had up to now been running the plantation but disappeared after being disinherited. The brooding Isabelle is actually in hiding, planning to use the power of voodoo and primitive local superstitions to plot her vengeance and regain control of the plantation.

Advertised as a "burning drama of love and hate in the tropics," The Devil's Daughter (a.k.a. Pocomania) was filmed on location in Jamaica. Actress Nina Mae McKinney, sometimes referred to as "The Black Garbo," was the star of Hallelujah, the first all-black, all-sound musical film made in 1929.

Chloe (1934; 62 minutes): Deep in the eerie swamplands of the south, an aging conjure woman named Mandy returns with beautiful daughter, Chloe, to the old ramshackle home she fled almost twenty years ago following her husband's grisly lynching death by a white mob. With a lust for revenge, Mandy plots against Colonel Gordon, a wealthy white distillery owner. When it's discovered that Chloe is actually the Colonel's long-lost daughter, the venomous Mandy flies into a mad rage and calls upon the local voodoo cultists to help her perform a bloody ritual of sacrificial vengeance.

Filmed in Florida, the low-budget Chloe (subtitled Love is Calling) was distributed mainly to black neighborhood theaters. Actress Olive Borden had been making movies for ten years and her role in Chloe marked one of her strongest performances, as well as her last. Tragically, the actress drifted onto Hollywood's version of Skid Row and met an early death nearly forgotten in a homeless shelter in 1940.

Product Description:

In THE DEVIL'S DAUGHTER, native New Yorker Sylvia Walton (Ida James) arrives in Jamaica to take control of a plantation she has inherited--with disastrous results. Unable to find her sister, who previously oversaw the plantation, Walton finds herself at the mercy of the locals and their powerful voodoo, while further surprises lurk for her in the dense jungle. Then, in CHLOE, an elderly woman plots revenge on the mob who killed her husband many years ago, and uses a little voodoo to help wreak her vengeance.

Plot Keywords:

Action |
Betrayal |
Black Heritage |
Cult Film |
Occult |
Vintage

Movie Lovers' Ratings & Reviews:

It's the bonus addition of "Chloe, Love Is Calling You" which makes this DVD very much worth the purchase - an atmospheric, loaded little old soaper full of the appalling racial mores of the early 1930's Deep South, with former silent film star Olive Borden (who died destitute in a homeless woman's shelter in the 1940's) playing the "high yaller" Chloe. The fascinating aspect is the righteous anger of the elderly Mandy, voodoo mistress - she doesn't meekly, humbly accept the horrible crime of her husband having been lynched 15 years before, but understandably continues her grudge and quest for revenge against the imperious, unfeeling whites whom she feels were responsible for it, the Colonel and his family. The "happy ending" appalls with its supercilious smugness, but - that was the 1930's South and the movies of the day. Devil's Daughter is awkwardly acted, often exceedingly boring, with only the fakey atmosphere of the West Indies indicated - the reason to watch is for Nina Mae McKinney, who should have been a movie star if only it weren't for the racial attitudes of the mainstream film industry - her pert, saucily malicious little femme fatale in 1929's early-talkie Hallalluh was performed when she was just a teenager, and she carried the entire movie; she's great as the tuneful innkeeper at a tropical resort in 1932's Safe In Hell - to see her as a has-been stiffly reciting her lines is a shame in this dud of a budget movie, Devil's Daughter, which for me rates not even one star.

Film Collectors & Archivists: Alpha Video is actively looking for rare and
unusual pre-1943 motion pictures, in good condition, from Monogram, PRC,
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